


breathless

by cpt_winniethepooh



Series: Happy Steve Bingo fills [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Asthma, Asthmatic Steve Rogers, Civil War Fix-It, Happy Steve Bingo, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, canon typical warnings apply, it's a happy end i promise you just have to suffer to get there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 12:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16063628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: Steve always had a complicated relationship with air, and also with Bucky Barnes. These two things are not as separate as you may think.A Happy Steve Bingo oneshot for the fill "breathless".





	breathless

Steve's lungs actively refused to take the necessary oxygen. His whole life he felt like his body was out to kill him, or at the very least to make his life as difficult as possible; but hey, so was the rest of the world. So instead of taking a deep breath, he just soldiered on, because that was what his Ma taught him.

On the worst days, his airways closed up completely, like someone put a hand on his throat and choked him, and the world began to swim until everything became black. Anything could set out such an attack, the emission from a passing car or just taking too big of a step.

On the best days, his head still ached constantly and he couldn't walk, or move, or lift things as much as the rest of his peers, let alone as much as he wanted. The full plate about how much his asthma had affected him had only became clear, however, after he got the serum and he inhaled without pain for the first time in his life.

It was a wonderful, incredible feeling, and he had never been so joyous about his own body before – it was suddenly good-looking, too, but what the rest of the world thought was just an added bonus to how he could actually _live_ , now. And run. And help. And do the things he had always dreamed about–

It lasted only until he learned that he was performing for the 107ths. He couldn't inhale, just went with the oxygen he already had in his lungs until Colonel Phillips confirmed the presumed death of Sergeant Barnes, and then–

He didn't black out. There was no hand squeezing his neck. He was still standing and the world still moved, and then he was moving too, because for once his body wasn't preventing him but helping him to do the right thing, to get the thing he couldn’t live without–

He marched into the camp and he only took the first full breath again when his arms finally, _finally_ found their way around Bucky.

 

 

Steve didn't think it could have been worse than watching Bucky fall, when the air was punched out of him, and he was suffocating so much that the only solution seemed to drown, too, both bodily and mentally. But it was worse, it was worse when he woke up alone in the future, where Bucky always wanted to go.

It wasn't just that he couldn't breathe. He couldn't do anything: eat or sleep or find his place – on the surface, he did all that and more, he fought for those that needed to be fought for, but a fog descended and separated him from the world without anybody noticing. He was sleepwalking, empty on the inside, just a past echoing around that nobody cared for–

Not even saving the world filled that void.

And then– and then it got _worse_. Much like how he had had no idea how much better things could get, before the serum, he had no idea how much worse it would get before the mask fell off from the Winter Soldier.

His lungs were collapsing. His world was collapsing.

He fell apart.

If it had been up to him, Sam and Nat would have died – not because he didn't care, but because he couldn't breathe enough to think, to help, to figure something out, to stop the spiraling of his memories, explanations, impossibilities–

It seemed only right, in the end, to fall after his shield; he never could breathe without Bucky, after all.

 

 

The will to live returned to him slowly. In the hospital his body ached just as his soul, but he recovered, and with that, hope filled his insides like air filling a balloon; slowly, tentatively. The fog that separated him from the world dissipated with each step that brought him closer to Bucky. He was still holding his breath, yes, but with anticipation, with the knowledge – because he would make it so – that he would be able to breathe again.

Oh, how many times he had wished to be his old, sickly self again, only to see Bucky for one more day. He would've given up all he had, quite literally including the oxygen in his lungs, for a happy, safe Bucky Barnes. A Bucky that wasn't tortured, that wasn't torn apart, _destroyed_...

That Bucky didn't exist anymore. The Bucky that did was just as different from the old that Steve was from the old Steve, and maybe that was all right. This Bucky did run away from Steve; this Bucky was used again to be a scapegoat, was even turned against Steve.

But for this Bucky, for all and every Bucky in the universe, Steve would hold his breath just to fish him out of the river. And when Bucky remembered him, Steve would get on his knees to cradle Bucky's arm, the left one, the one that had been bench-pressed when they didn't know who would wake up, him or the Soldier. And Bucky would allow that, and from then on, Steve would be able to _breathe_.

 

 

And when all this was over, when Bucky's mind was healed and Steve visited him in Wakanda, Bucky – a version somewhere between the old and new, but to Steve, equally precious – Bucky would kiss him only to prove that being breathless wasn't always such a bad thing. 

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo this wasn't as happy as I wanted it to be but I hope that's still okay and you liked it :) please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts and come scream to me on [tumblr ](http://cpt-winniethepooh.tumblr.com/):) 
> 
> (Total sidenote, I hope I used the tenses at the end right. It's supposed to be certainty, not just a possibility.)
> 
> The next one will be much more fluffy, so stay tuned!


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